Churn recognition

Churn recognition is a ChartMogul setting that controls the exact moment ChartMogul records lost revenue when a customer cancels or fails to renew a subscription. It directly affects your reported MRR, churn rate, and retention metrics.

In ChartMogul, the churn recognition setting determines the exact point in time when churn is recorded, directly affecting reported MRR, churn rate, retention metrics, and the financial period in which revenue loss appears in your reports.

To change this setting, go to :settings~gray: Settings > Data Settings. Choose an option from the Record churn in your reports drop-down and click SAVE CHANGES. Learn more about data settings.

ChartMogul offers three churn recognition options:

• When a subscription is marked as canceled in the billing system — ChartMogul recognizes churn at the time the subscription is canceled or expires in your billing system.
• At the end of the final subscription service period — ChartMogul recognizes churn at the end of the billing period of the last paid or open invoice, even if the subscription is canceled immediately in your billing system. This is often considered good practice for MRR reporting.
• As soon as a customer schedules cancellation — If you select this option and aren’t using Recurly, Stripe or Chargebee, ChartMogul will recognize cancellations as churn when the subscription ends in your billing system. This option gives you a real-time view of your forward-looking MRR and is closer to the concept of Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue (CMRR).

Known Limitations by Billing System

How Google Play and App Store Connect handle churn

The churn recognition setting works the same for all billing system integrations, except as noted here:

1. Google Play — When importing using the Daily Sales Report, ChartMogul recognizes subscription cancellations at the end of their billing period.
2. App Store Connect — Similar to Google Play, the App Store reports don’t provide cancellation dates. Because of this, we report cancellations at the end of the service period. However, cancellations resulting from refunded subscriptions follow the churn settings.

Because of these limitations, ChartMogul always recognizes cancellations as churn at the end of the service period for Google Play and App Store Connect — regardless of your churn recognition setting.

Churn recognition

For all sources (except Stripe, Recurly, and Braintree) that have churn recognition set to At the end of the final subscription service period, churn in a given month may be different than what you expect. The service period is the billing cycle the customer has already paid for.

In ChartMogul, a subscription’s cancellation date and its service period start date must be different. As such, ChartMogul subtracts one second from the cancellation date.

For example, a subscription starts on January 1 and has a renewal on February 1. In January, the customer cancels the subscription. ChartMogul calculates January 31, 23:59:59 as the cancellation date (subtracting one second from February 1, 00:00:00) and recognizes the churn in January (not February).

Churn at click and future-dated cancellations

For Stripe and Chargebee, you can schedule cancellations to take effect after the current service period ends. If you use the As soon as a customer schedules cancellation setting, ChartMogul records a churn/reactivation MRR movement and marks the subscription as past due. To avoid this, manually cancel the subscription instead.